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Pearls of Weber

A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.

Posted by David at 12:00am

Hamish Alexander and children

Series: Honorverse

Date: October 22, 2002

Emily and Hamish could, indeed, have had children. They had not done
so prior to Emily's accident because they were both prolong recipients and figured they
would have "plenty of time" once the ruinous temporary (of course) time demands
of Hamish's naval career during the early buildup against Haven had relented somewhat.

They have not had children since the accident because Emily
has chosen not to. Her reason is that it was not until her accident that she became aware
of certain problems in her genotype. Specifically, the reasons she does not regenerate.
Honor's problem is that her engineered genotype is "locked," and aspects of the
tinkering which was done to create her heavy-grav tolerance inhibit regeneration in about
40% of the people who have it. In her children, a little genetic modification
(which can be easily accomplished after conception) would permit that inhibition to be
removed. In Emily's case, the genetic problems which peclude regeneration are much more
complex and cannot be corrected without risking the introduction of several other
dangerous disease states. Moreover, the odds of repeating the problem in her case is
almost 3-in-1.

Given her own experiences with the consequence of being unable to
regenerate, she has chosen not to have children of her own who would be likely to share
the same problem. (No one ever said that paranoia had to be logical, and given her life
experience, she is downright fanatical about not exposing another child to it.) Willie
Alexander is married (you should meet his wife in the next Honor novel) and has several
children, for whom Emily is the doting aunt and who secure the Alexander succession, and
she and Hamish never really "needed" children to confirm their love for one
another. Now, if it should just happen somehow that Honor and Hamish were to
somehow end up reproducing (not saying it's gonna happen, y'unnerstan', but if it just happened
to), then Emily would be in seventh heaven, I suspect. In fact, it might even overcome her
own hesitation to produce biological children of her own. Or, of course, she could
complete the sublimation of her own maternal instincts by investing them all in a child of
Honor's and Hamish's.